


Tili Tili Bom

by buckyno



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Hydra, Jealousy, M/M, Misunderstandings, Nightmares, Not Beta Read, Pietro Lives, Torture, but then again everybody loves thor, clint you dummy, lil bit of Natasha/Wanda at the end, tiny itty bity crush on pietro's part for thor, wanda is a good sis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-02
Updated: 2015-07-02
Packaged: 2018-04-07 05:50:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4251777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckyno/pseuds/buckyno
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pietro survives the battle in Sokovia, barely, only to spend the following weeks in a coma.  While he sleeps some of what happened to the twins when they were under Hydra’s “care” comes to light, Clint boards the biggest guilt train known to man, and Wanda sings lullabies.  When Pietro finally wakes up things are no easier.  Misunderstandings ensue, thank God for Wanda.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tili Tili Bom

 

 

The Doc says he may never wake up.  Helen breaks the news as softly and gently as she can to Wanda who is the epitome of stoic pain.  She doesn’t look hopeful to Clint.  She had felt Pietro die.  The pain of his consciousness being torn from hers was something she would never forget, and Clint takes that as…well, if with all her power Wanda can’t bring herself to hope for her twin’s return than how could Clint hold on to any wisps of faith for the same.  But then again he didn’t know Wanda very well, sure he had keen eyes but Wanda was like a storm on the ocean.  You never knew where it might land.  Despite the apparent hopelessness in her dark eyes Wanda was at Pietro’s bedside every single day without fail.  The time she spent there always varied depending on what Captain America called on her to do that day but she still always made back it to sing her brother a lullaby before she went to sleep herself.

Clint accidently made a habit out of hovering at the door of Pietro’s room in the medical bay.  He says he’s checking on Wanda except sometimes Wanda isn’t there.  Clint never goes in.  Pietro looks like something out of a fairy tale, Sleeping Beauty or Snow White, his brain can never settle on one inappropriate analogy.  It was inappropriate; thinking the kid still looked beautiful surrounded by glass and sterile metal.  Eyelashes long and black against pale cheeks, lips a pale rose, and much too still.  Clint fists his hands and turns on a heel, furious at himself and at fate.  Pietro shouldn’t be there, Clint should.  All whole slew of undeserving assholes should be there, anyone but Pietro who was, yeah, sarcastic beyond measure and prone to a certain kind of dickishness.  More than that Pietro was protective, kind, too sharp-witted for his own good.

Clint didn’t really think he had a right to have an opinion about Pietro when despite their back and forth thing they shared on the battle field he knew who Pietro was as well as Wanda but he couldn’t quite help the attachment that grew in his chest and wound itself around his heart, thorns and all.  It all gets worse when Tony informs them the next night while they’re both looking in on Pietro via the Avengers Tower new A.I. (whose name he didn’t remember yet but it wasn’t J.A.R.V.I.S. and it still kind of weirded him out a little) that they discovered some things in Hydra’s files about the Maximoff twins and perhaps Wanda would want to be present when they went through it.

Whatever Clint had expected it wasn’t the horror he had to watch on Tony’s dual holographic screens.  Wanda stood stone-faced with Steve and Natasha bracketing her while watching what Hydra had done to her and her brother without a word.  Steve has a look on his face Clint can’t place, like what he’s watching is more personal than what he should be feeling, Natasha steals a glance at him over Wanda’s head and Clint knows there’s something there no one’s is talking about.  That’s fine, everybody has got secrets.

The screens skip around in a blur of needles and restraints nothing too bloody happens until after the twins have taken to the treatments.  They’re the only ones to survive out of over two dozen experimental candidates, neither of them ever screams. Hydra lets them rest a whole day before throwing them in separate but side by side cells. Strucker himself explains to them they would be learning to control their new abilities.  Wanda’s is kept very bright and a scientist off screen explains that it is soundproof and the oxygen levels are kept low to create a sensory deprivation environment. The theory being it would help Wanda focus her mental abilities, very forcefully. Pietro’s personal hell was much more physical.  His cell was bigger than Wanda’s, the floor was covered in sharp jagged edges of glass and discarded blades half a foot deep with a single clear space to stand on.  Hydra’s approach there was much simpler for him, control your movements and your speed or bleed out.  Thing was, Pietro literally couldn’t stay still, he’s all over the room—slamming into the walls and scraping his bare feet across the sharp floor.  The lights in Wanda’s room brightened as the lights in Pietro’s were turned completely out.

Tony is the one who pushes past the initial shock of what they’re watching to tell Wanda, “Kid, you don’t have to be here for this.  We just thought, ya know, it was kind of personal.  Thought you should know what Hydra had on you.”

Wanda shakes her head, “No.  I want to see.”

The footage skips forward several days, finally the scientists bring the lights in the cells to normal levels and Clint can’t breathe.  Pietro’s hair is white now but you could hardly tell it for all the blood he’s covered in.  He’s on the ground with his back to the wall Clint can see his lips are moving, rhythmically as if in song, Pietro has a his hand pressed against the wall behind him.  Wanda is on the exact same spot on the other side of the wall her eyes are red-rimmed and too wide, anything in the room that could was floating listlessly in the air surrounded by an eerie red light.  She tilts her head, listening to something that should be impossible for her to hear and smiles sadly.

“He never told me…”  Wanda started, her voice cracking, “His mind was the only thing I could reach, he could feel me too.  So he would sing and I could hear him.  Every day.  But he would never let me feel what he was feeling or seeing.  I never knew.”  Something already fragile in Clint broke and he’s covering the distance between him and Wanda with a few long steps to wrap her in a fierce hug.  He thinks he says he’s sorry.

Behind him Clint can hear the scientist chatter excitedly in German.  They talk about Pietro’s healing ability his high metabolism and speed enables him and Wanda, oh, they are ecstatic about her.  They note that she could hear her brother with her mind and the telekinesis was a goal Hydra had been running towards for a long time.  The twins are they’re highest successes, gold and beyond value.  The two are taken out of their cells not long after.  Cleaned up and the tests after that are much more mundane if not still grossly over-exerting them.  Sometimes they rile Pietro up for so long and push him so hard the boy can’t stop shaking afterward, he would make to simply walk and end up stumbling forward at super human speed.  Wanda more often than not ended her days with a bleeding nose and look on her face that spoke volumes of the reality she was experiencing.  The only thing to ground them both was each other.  They got better and Strucker could always be seen with them behind the scenes with his razor blade smile and fanatical gaze.

“I’m sorry, kid, I really am.”  Clint reiterates when the footage comes to an end.

Wanda smiles, “Do not be, we volunteered.”

Clint sternly cuts her off, “They lied to you.”

“Yes, but if we were not so full of anger we would have seen past their lies.  Our rage fueled us for too long, it is that rage that lead us there and that is our fault.  I feel it burning in our hearts even now.”

“That isn’t your fault either, that’s a reaction to all the shit you’ve had to go through.  Taking responsibility for what you’ve done is a noble thing, it really is but you can’t take it all.  That weight will crush you.”  Tony shifts his weight at Clint’s words and Natasha is looking at Clint with knowing eyes.  They’ve had that same conversation before.  No one standing in that room could preach high upon the mountain and judge others, especially not the twins and no amount of bad judgement would justify what the twins were forced to endure. Wanda gives him the same sad smile and says nothing.

 The footage isn’t the only there is, they watch things for hours.  It’s not always the twins, sometimes it’s the brutal dissection of failed subjects, more often its information related to Loki’s scepter which is all kinds of interesting to everyone except Clint.  Just looking at the thing feels like a punch to the gut. Knowing the scepter caused the Maximoffs so much pain too feels even worse.  He noticed Pietro’s eyes weren’t so blue before the experiments and all he can think of is what his own reflection looked like under Loki’s control.  It’s gone now, the scepter, but the damage is already done and the soul of the thing is still hanging around.  Clint isn’t sure about Vision and the stone, he’s not sure the team should trust a fucking robot just because he can pick up a magic hammer.  Clint’s not sure of much anymore.

Wanda helps them sort through the majority of Hydra’s records for the rest of the day.  A huge portion of them were corrupted by Strucker before the Avengers stormed their base but ultimately they learn more than they thought they would about Hydra’s current operations.  Wanda tells them when, not if and just at that word Clint’s chest twinges, Pietro wakes he can tell them more.  Hydra employee’s talked more to him than her, no one liked to be in a room with a telepath and Pietro could apparently be very charming when he tried.  Wanda relays that last piece of information in a flat tone and a dark look.  Again Clint was pressed  with wanting to ask her about their life but doesn’t because its none of his damned business but he also irrationally wants to know everything there is to know about Pietro Maximoff and he wants Wanda to smile for real.  He wants Pietro to wake up most of all.

That night Clint and Wand return to Pietro’s side.  Wanda basically drags Clint into the room, her jaw set stubbornly refusing to let him take his post by the doorway like, as Wanda says, a doe-eyed gargoyle.  It’s a little awkward at first for some reason, as if guarding the door silently hadn’t been but now he feels like he’s intruding.  Wanda runs her hands through Pietro’s hair gently putting a few stray strands out of his face, Clint wonder what it would feel like to be able to do that.  Wanda flashes him a look that makes him worry she knows exactly what was going through his head.  She might.  He knows they aren’t in complete control of their powers yet and wasn’t that just terrifying?  What seemed long after the battle in Sokovia Wanda apologized for entering their minds, and wished she could promise never to do it again but as it was her powers seeped out of her at the seams always reaching toward the conscious minds around her.  Most of the time she could focus it all on her brother sometimes she picked up on the other’s thoughts though like radio stations interfering with her signal.  Of course Clint wasn’t okay with it but, the kid couldn’t help it.  He was more worried about the kinds of things she picked up from him before Pietro got shot.  Like when they were on the ride back to Sokovia and Pietro stood in between Wanda and the rest of the team making shielding his sister with his body look natural, it probably was, all Clint could think about was that fucking skin tight _thing_ Pietro was wearing.  They were riding into battle and Clint couldn’t stop gawking like some stupid horny teenager and he just…he just…felt pulled in too many directions and no matter where he tried to head he was royally fucking up.  Then Pietro sacrificed himself.  Died right in front of Clint, _for_ Clint, it was the loudest cruelest Fuck You the universe ever gave him.  The second loudest thing in the universe was Wanda’s scream.  Wanda didn’t scream anymore, now she sang lullabies.

“Tili tili bom,

Zakroy glaza skoreye,

Kto-to khodit za oknom,

I stuchhitsya v dveri.

Tili tili bom,

Krichit nochnaya ptitsa.

On uzhe probralsya v dom.

K tem, komu ne spitsya.

Tili tili bom.

Ty slyshish’, kto-to ryadom?

Pritailsya za uglom,

I pronzayet vzglyadom.

Tili tili bom.

Vse skroyet noch’ nemaya.

Za toboy kradetsya on,

I vot-vot poymayet.

Tili tili bom…”

Wanda had a very pretty voice, soft and clear.  She reminded him of the big wind chimes his Laura used to hang on the front porch at their family farm. 

“That sounded Russian.”  Clint says an observation and a question.

“It is, our Grandmother came to Sokovia to marry our Grandfather.  The marriage was arranged but they loved each other.  She used to sing it to my Mother, and my Mother sang it us when were little.”

Clint could imagine it, “Can I ask what it’s about?  My Russian is a little rusty.”

Wanda pats her brothers hand, the tiny smile on her face just shy of amused, “It is about the, what is it in English?  Ah, boogeyman, visiting the children at night who will not go to sleep.  He comes in their house, stares at them in their bed.  Takes them.”

Clint blinks, “Okay.  That’s fucking creepy, kid.”

“Pietro used to hate it so much.”  Wanda chuckled, “He would lie awake at night, eyes wide like the full moon…then our Mother was gone and she did not sing to us anymore.  So we would sing to each other instead.  He sang it to me when we were in Hydra’s hands.  Some days there, his voice in my head was all I knew.”  Wanda’s eyes shimmered with unshed tears, “I cannot hear him anymore, Clint.”

“You will.” He’s surprised how certain he sounds.

“I wonder if this is what he felt like.  The world around him goes so slow but he could do nothing but move so fast so he had to always wait.  Wait for the world to catch up, wait for me.  He was always so patient.”

“Pietro Maximoff and patient don’t sound like they belong together.”

Wanda shrugs and smiles enigmatically.  She starts humming in the tune of Tili Tili Bom and Clint isn’t sure when he falls asleep but when he wakes up Wanda is gone and he’s holding Pietro’s hand.  The kid feels searing hot.  Too hot, Clint has a minor freak-out and calls in Helen telling her about fevers and gunshot wounds and things she certainly already knew about.  The Doc is immensely reassuring, she informs Clint that because of Pietro’s enhanced metabolism his core temperature was always around 108 degrees Fahrenheit. Pietro was fine, considering, stable.  Helen levels him with a look that is one hundred percent doctor, “Leave the boy to recuperate and take care of yourself Clint Barton.  You need sleep too Clint Barton.  You are not super human Clint Barton.”  Helen “Clint Barton”s him right out of the med bay and he barely registers it, he’s that tired.

Clint sleeps but Pietro sleeps longer.  Helen doesn’t say so however Clint knows the longer someone is in a coma the harder it is for them to come out of it.  Three weeks into Pietro’s coma, to Clint it was all a blur of missions and sitting in that damned room, the boy suddenly goes missing and everybody’s hearts nearly stop.  Clint would have though Helen had him in for some more tests if it weren’t for the room being trashed and then Helen rushing into the room where Wanda and Clint were waiting with her face twisted in worried shock.  Tony immediately scans the tower and pin points Pietro’s vitals on the roof at the edge of the helipad.  At least they know someone didn’t get in the tower and take him for whatever reason.  Clint grabs Wanda and together they head up as fast as the elevators will take them and sprint to the helipad area.

Pietro is standing there in nothing but a pair of pale blue pajama bottoms illuminated by the morning sun.  He spreads his hands and tilts his head back, soaking in the sunlight.  He’s too close to the edge for Clint to be elated that the kid is awake and standing on his own two feet.  Blue eyes snap open and focus on Wanda, Pietro looks pained and says something in Sokovian just as Natasha appears at Clint’s side.  Whatever Pietro said has Wanda shaking her head furiously and tears streaming unabashedly down her face, she’s saying something back but it’s not close enough to Russian for Clint to get the gist.

Natasha sees his confusion and leans in quietly, “He asked if he was dead.”

Pietro’s eyes land on Clint and he frowns before returning to Wanda and saying in thickly accented English with weakest most unbelievable half-smile Clint’s ever seen, “Oh.  That’s good.”

Wanda rushes to crush her brother in a hug.  Pietro buries his face in her hair and holds her back just as tight.  Helen appears and has no problem breaking the twins apart because according to the A.I. Pietro woke up rather violently, apparently barely managing to reign in his powers before going off the edge of Avengers Tower.  The thought was bracing.  Helen puttered around Pietro checking for any possible damage he’d done to himself.  His wounds from Sokovia were completely healed without so much as a scar to show what happened and running into some walls had apparently not even left a bruise.  The Doc was already shining a flash light in Pietro’s startled eyes and checking his pulse and all that good stuff while Clint hadn’t moved a muscle forward since he saw Pietro standing there like some fucking angel or some other cliché as hell shit.  Natasha is giving him her infamous side-eye and he can feel her focus on him like radiation prickling his skin.  She knows.  He knows she knows and the way neither of them say anything about it is all very grown-up.

Clint doesn’t step up and put his arms around Pietro, doesn’t hold his face and order him never to do anything so stupid again.  No, Clint takes a few steps backward then turns to retreat completely back inside.  Cowardly?  Maybe, but at the very least his lungs would work again with Pietro out of sight.  He should call Laura, check on his nieces and nephews (one whose middle name was in fact Pietro but not even under torture would Clint admit that), check on his freaking tomato plants.  Any distraction was a welcome one.  A big part of him felt like shit.  All this time sitting with his hand on Pietro’s hand, listening to his sister sing for him and now Clint couldn’t look at him healthy and whole because of the pure emotional vomit he threatened to spew in front of the whole world.

Clint makes his job avoiding Pietro.  From afar he can’t help checking up on him, but only ever from afar.  Pietro keeps his distance from the other Avengers too, particularly Tony and Clint understands why but he hadn’t expected the kid to be so quiet save for a few clever barbs every now and then the only one he really holds a conversation with is Wanda and occasionlly Thor when Thor visits.  He seems to get a kick out of the fact there are so many other worlds out there in the universe  and Thor is only too pleased to describe them in great detail over coffee.  Pietro is handling a lot and handling it relatively well as far as anyone can tell, Clint didn’t think he needed Clint’s feelings on his plate too.  Then Helen clears Pietro for active duty on the Avengers if the kid wants it.  Pietro does.  And thus began a whole new type of hell for Clint.  Clint stops himself short of going to Helen and asking just what the hell was she thinking, Helen knows her job better than Clint ever will and it’s not his place to be upset about it anyway.  It’s not his place, like that even matters, his brain is gonna do what his brain is gonna do and his brain is gonna be upset that this punk kid who he might be a little bit in love with is again putting himself in danger.

Pietro isn’t reckless on missions, he’s selfless, Clint didn’t know which was worse.  The archer can barely keep track of him on the field, he’s so fast and absolutely brutal with their enemies and so obviously caring for the civilians.  It’s that care that gets him hurt again.  They’re all busy trying to be nonlethal while taking to take out a group of cybernetically enhanced humans with anger management issues who had reportedly been fine an hour ago.  One, a supped-up woman wearing head gear Cyclops would die for and a pair of guns strapped to her hands in a way that made it look like they didn’t come off, sets her sights on a minivan half full of kids and a screaming dad.  Clint adjusts his bow, ready to take her out with a stunning arrow but when the arrow hits her square between the shoulder blades and she fumbles over a small metal ball rolls out from beneath her prone body to right under the car.  Before Clint can even think “grenade” the blue and silver blur that was Pietro was there scooping it up and swooshing it away a safe distance from the family.  Except the grenade goes off too soon and Clint can’t believe he has to feel that pain again and everything in him screams, “Oh, God, Pietro, please don’t, please be okay.”  Pietro gets flung back into some overturned cars and all Clint knows is that he’s jumping from his position to the ground with his breath caught in his throat.  Thor lands next to Pietro before Clint does.  Pietro groans and swears in a colorful mix of Sokovian and English.  Thor gently helps him up but Pietro’s leg caught some shrapnel flung by the grenade.  Jagged metal is lodged in Pietro’s knee, a few smaller pieces are imbedded in his thigh soaking the leg of his pants through with blood.  The kid looks a little paler than usual and a little wide-eyed at Clint’s presence.  Which, Clint guessed, was his own fault.

“Jesus, kid, you need to be more careful.”  Clint is a little gruffer than he intends.  He couldn’t be more grateful.  That blast would have killed a regular human being.

Pietro almost flinches at the tone before he breaks into a smile Clint sees him use on reporters, “I will walk it off.”

“I’m afraid you won’t be walking anywhere on that leg, my friend.”  Thor points out.  Behind him the rest of the Avengers are doing a good job of corralling the leftover enhanced humans.

Stubbornly Pietro shakes his head, eyes everywhere but at Clint, “I am fine.”

Thor smiles, “A true warrior.  Even so you need medical attention.”  Thor carefully but swiftly picks Pietro up bridal style, Pietro yelps and flushes from the tips of ears down his neck despite his blood loss, then Thor takes to the air leaving Clint on the ground feeling like he got kicked in the stomach.  Jealousy and concern brewed noxiously inside him.

The Avengers finish up the enhanced human in quick order later finding out they were the remnants of a Hydra program called Centipede.  Wanda finds Clint at the tower after the mission is completed and she is furious which to anyone that didn’t know her very well just looked like a polite smile and a hard stare.  He’s just about to duck into his rooms (well, floor technically that was split to make room for the twins, Tony and his weird ways of showing affection) when Wanda snags his arm like the first day she pulled him with her into Pietro’s room

“You talk to him.  Now.”  She’s already pulling Clint tiredly pliable behind her, “He is in the med bay and you are an idiot.”  Wanda shakes her head to herself and mutters in Sokovian.

Clint pulls away, “Alright, enough.  Is he okay because if he—”

Wanda cants her head, “He is not okay.  Please, Clint.”

Clint scrubs his face and tries not to be swallowed by the pit of constant anxiety inside of him.  It’s a curious line he walks between wanting to be around Pietro every minute of the day and the feeling of “you are going to fuck this up that’s kinda what you do Barton” that accompanies that want.  With the look that Wanda’s giving him he’s afraid he’s already fucked things up so he follows her in all her boot-stomping glory, complaining only the minimum which is quickly silenced by her red-tinted glare.

The med bay is a lot busier than usual.  A team of doctors and scientists are working on ways to remove the implants the enhanced humans had altering their personalities safely.  Wanda drops Clint off abruptly at Pietro’s private room just as the kid cracks a wry joke about Helen wanting to rip his pants off.  The doctor is indeed cutting open Pietro’s left pant leg all the way up his to his thigh in order to get to the shrapnel still embedded in his skin.  Wanda is gone and all Clint can say is “Um.”

Pietro jerks his head at the sound of Clint’s voice and the dumb kid actually tries to stand up when he enters the room, Helen is there to push him back down on the uncomfortable looking metal table he has to sit on.

“Take it easy, kid.  Just…checking up on you is all.”  Clint says trying not to sound too weird.

Pietro cants his head in a mirror of the way Wanda does and frowns, “Why?”

“Because I was worried.”  Okay, Clint knows Pietro being confused was his own fault.  He should have been there for him after he came out of the coma.  He should have followed Thor carrying Pietro like a damsel to the med bay to make sure he was okay instead heading to his rooms where he planned on queuing up the A.I. to give him a video feed of Pietro in the med bay like a creeper.

Helen, bless her soul, continued to quietly remove shrapnel from her patient’s leg while the two have their very personal exchange over her head.  Clint notices that Pietro doesn’t even flinch when Helen takes out a particularly large piece and he tries not to think about the cell Hydra shoved Pietro in.

Pietro looks distinctly uncomfortable and his arched eyebrows furrow even further, “But you hate me.”  His big blue eyes are barely concealing the hurt there even when his voice does a good job of seeming almost flippant.

A harsh cold bucket of reality hits Clint in the face, in a voice too loud he exclaims, “What!?”

Startled Pietro echoes back, “What?”

Helen finishes wrapping Pietro wounds, the bandages would be able to come off tomorrow, and slips out to leave the two alone.  Clint makes a mental note to bring her back something really nice the next time he goes out of country.  He waits for her to exit, the sliding glass door closing automatically behind her.  Clint grabs her ergonomic wheeled “doctor’s” chair and plops himself down heavily.  Maybe his voice cracks a little when he asks, “Why the hell would you think I hate you?  I…what I feel is the exact opposite of that, like the _exact_ opposite.”  Wow, Barton, Clint smashed the urge to hit himself in the face.

“I do not know what that means.” Pietro mutters testing out his leg, “But you cannot stand to be around me.  You barely look at me, even now you stare at the floor.  You treat me like a liability.”

“No, no no. Aw, damn it.  I thought things would be better if I kept my distance—look apparently that was stupid, and I’m so sorry, kid.  You’re the best of us.”

Pietro gives him a self-depreciating smile, “Wanda said you were here when I was…sleeping.  I thought she was fucking with me.”

Clint raises an eyebrow, obviously not buying that Wanda would do such a thing and Pietro lets out an honest laugh that makes Clint’s stomach do the _swoosh_ thing, “You forget we are siblings.  She _lives_ to fuck with me.”

“Yeah, heh.  She wasn’t.  I wanted to be there.  I wanted to be there after too, I guess I figured you had enough shit to handle without me.  I wanted to make sure you were safe?  I’m rambling again, sorry.”

“I do not mind.”  There’s a glint of mischievousness in Pietro’s eyes that puts Clint more at ease.  Pietro stands and is able to put his weight on both his legs, Clint finds his bare thigh…very distracting.  He’s a little afraid of how transparent he’s being, Clint remembered a time when he’d been good at secrets.  If Natasha were there instead of being on whatever super-secret business she and Steve have going on, that’s he’s still not bitter about honest, she would slap upside the head and he would freaking deserve it.

A little more confidently, cocky really, Pietro accuses, “You _like_ me.”

Miserably Clint nods and refrains the words “A little more than like” from coming out his mouth and mentally pats himself on the back.  Pietro is very close, Clint can feel the kid’s natural heat radiating off him.

Too soon Pietro shifts away, “You have a shitty way of showing it.”  He says it in a tone that’s somewhere between amused and angry and Clint realizes Pietro is just as much a storm as his sister because he has no idea where this is going. 

“I’m sor—”

“Shut up.”  Pietro says it tiredly then shrugs, a smile settling on his lips. “Wanda and I are starting the first season of Hannibal tonight.  We catch up on television in our rooms, you know the ones directly across from yours, Stark always spoils things when we watch them in the rec hall.  Bring food.  Six o’ clock.”

“What?” Clint replies dumbly.  Was he being forgiven?  Was Pietro just wanting snacks before he punched Clint in the face?  Both were entirely possible with Quicksilver.

“Lots of food.”  Pietro calls as he brushes past Clint walking way too fast for his injuries but at least he wasn’t using his powers.

A full minute passes before Helen sticks her head in and says, “Are you done brooding in here because I actually need this room?”  Clint goes red and leaves with as much dignity as he can muster in front of Helen’s grinning face.

That night Clint is standing in the hallway that separated his half of the floor from the Maximoff’s with his arms full of Chinese food and bags of various incredibly unhealthy snacks.  There was enough food to feed a small army which was approximately how much the Maximoff’s ate, Pietro mostly and Wanda to a lesser but no less impressive degree.  Pietro burned through calories like a Hummer did gasoline and his appetite reflected that, Wanda was just taken with all the new tastes.  They both ate with the hurried reverence of people who weren’t used to having enough to eat, that Clint knew a thing or two about that from his own experience.  He hopes he brought enough.

Clint knocks only once before the door flies open to reveal a soft-looking Pietro in a long sleeved blue shirt that went passed his knuckles and loose black work-out pants.  Vaguely in the back of his mind Clint thinks he shouldn’t pay so much attention to what Pietro wears, in the forefront of his mind his main thought is thank god I’m not overdressed for this.  Pietro smirks and takes the majority of the food out of his arms though he leaves the door open for Clint.  The elder Maximoff calls to his sister who is already buried in a pile of blankets on the plush sofa of their living area.  Their sofa is too close to the flat screen Tony had installed for them but Clint didn’t bother saying anything about it.  Clint had never been on their side of the floor before, not after he moved his stuff out (which wasn’t much stuff at all).  It smelled like spices and incense, there was a certain artistic bohemian style Clint immediately attributed to Wanda and an obvious affection for streamlined technology that felt like Pietro.  He’d expected a separation of style and items but the Maximoffs were fused seamlessly together in everything and had created a truly homely environment so that Clint felt again like he was intruding.

Wanda probably sensed his apprehension because the smile she sends his way is bright and warm.  Pietro deposits the goods on a glass coffee table in front of the sofa and behind his back Wand also gives Clint two thumbs up of approval that was simultaneously the cutest and dorkiest thing Clint had ever seen. 

“Sit down, Old Man.”  Pietro says, picking through the contents of the Chinese food containers singling-out favorites.  Clint takes his position at the other end of the sofa from Wanda and Pietro flops down between them taking up as much room as humanly possible with that lithe long-legged body of his.  Wanda leans into her brother, Clint does his best not to do the same.

Wanda is in control of blue-ray player and never releases that control throughout the night.  Clint quickly gathers that is normal in the Maximoff household.  Everything isn’t as awkward as Clint worried it was going to be.  They all settled into each other, bickered, ate too many Swedish Fish candies and watched TV.  It was nothing special, normal.  It was perfect.  Clint watched the horror flash over Pietro’s face the further into the episodes they got and Wanda’s undiluted fascination with it all.  Wanda said the show had a certain beauty, Pietro said it was just “Really fucked up.” Neither’s attention wandered the way Clint’s did, mostly due to a white-haired someone who was basically laying half on top of him.  Clint hesitated putting his arm around Pietro’s shoulders though it would make their positions more comfortable, his hand fluttered uselessly on the back of the couch before holding his breath and giving in.  Pietro could move if he wanted, or hit him, that was in fact something a straight guy might do when another man puts his arm around him.  Pietro does stiffen and despite the only illumination in the room being the TV screen Clint can see a faint dappling of pink across Pietro’s cheek bones and nose, which was, wow, fucking beautiful.  Pietro takes a few seconds before he relaxes back into Clint, a tiny smile there that vanishes when another terrible thing happens to Will Graham on the screen.

“Oh my God,” Wanda whispers her hands clasp over her mouth in genuine worry, “what is going to happen to his dogs?”

Pietro gives her a look and no one questions it when she starts season two even if it was super late.  Clint doesn’t remember falling asleep and considering he had a lapful of Pietro Maximoff he was little upset by that.  His eyes are a little crusted with sleep when he blinks them open.  The windows hadn’t been dimmed so that let in a little of the greyish-yellow early morning light, extremely early morning.  Clint looks around for a clock and finds out it was barely four, he felt cheated but was quickly moved to awe because Pietro was still there lying on the sofa with him, sleeping with his head on Clint’s chest.  Wanda was nowhere to be seen.  Instead of worrying about their position Clint opted to try and fall back to sleep.  He never got that far.  Pietro is restless in his arms, brows furrowed low and face in obvious pain.  Whimpers escaped the younger man’s mouth that erupted to a full-blown heart shattering scream then suddenly Pietro was a blur of silver and blue.  Clint watched helplessly as he crashed over the coffee table then sped into the nearest wall putting a dent into it with his shoulder.  Pietro clutches at the wall, gasping for air, more or less still.  Clint scrambles out of the sofa cushions to kneel at his side.

“Kid?  Pietro?”  Clint’s afraid to raise his voice, Pietro’s eyes are wide expanses of blue but they are unseeing and he’s still breathing too hard.  Clint gently keeps calling Pietro’s name but doesn’t touch him or startle him fully awake.

Slowly  Pietro calms down, all that fear is replaced with fury.  He’s cursing in Sokovian at himself, at the wall, his attention lands on Clint and he’s surprised, scared, then scowls with a viciousness Clint had only seen on the battle field.

“You know where the door is.”  Pietro dismisses him his accent thick with sleep and anger.  He’s a blur again , Clint tracks the wisps of blue to the door of Pietro’s bedroom.

The thought of leaving didn’t really cross Clint’s mind.  He’d told the kid he wanted to be there for him after he came out of his coma and that’s what he was going to do.  Not because he felt obligated, not because Pietro saved his life, he wanted to.  With all his heart he wanted to be there for him.  His legs moved almost on their own, just because he wanted something didn’t mean he had any fucking clue how to do it.  Pietro’s door is just a door, a little high-tech but then again Tony Stark designed everything in the Tower right down to what kind of tiles went into the bathrooms, but it felt like the damned Berlin Wall.  He places his hand on the door as if he were soothing an animal and says, “I’m not going anywhere, kid.”

Nothing but silence.

“C’mon, Pietro, talk to me.  Please.  Please, talk to me.”

He feel vibrations on the door as if someone was leaning against it for support.  From the other side Pietro’s voice is muffled, “What you said before, about not wanting to make your problems my own?  I am the same.  This is my problem, I can deal with it alone.  Go away.”

Stubbornly Clint replies, “No.”

“Because you like me?”  There’s something hard in his tone, mocking almost.  If Pietro’s trying to drive him away Clint decides it’s not going to work.  He could be a real hard-headed bastard when he needed to be.

Clint’s voice cracks, “Yeah.”  The door is jerked open a foot and Clint almost face-plants into it.

“You are a very annoying man.”  Pietro says still not letting him in.

“Funny,” Clint quips, “I thought the same about you the first time we met.”

Pietro stares at him for a long time then ever so warily he lets his door swing open and turns allowing Clint to follow him.  The room is dark but there is enough light to see the damage done.  A lot of the furniture is broken, the walls are scuffed with impressions that would match Pietro’s fists and shoulders.  Pietro wraps his arms around himself and looks down, ashamed.

“This isn’t the first time you woke up like that is it?”  Clint gently asks.

Pietro shakes his head.

“How long?”

“Since…I woke up the first time.  Every night so far.”

Clint’s jaw goes slack.  Weeks.  Weeks of night terrors every single day and Pietro hadn’t said a word about it and for all intents and purposes he looked absolutely fine.  That’s appearances for you.  Pietro was so strong and he didn’t even realize it.

“Can I ask…?

“It is nothing.”  Pietro bites.

“It’s obviously not nothing.”  Clint makes a hand-wavy gesture toward the destruction around them.

“No.  That is not what I mean.”  Pietro looks frustrated, uncomfortable.  He probably wasn’t used to having talk about things like this when all Wanda had to do was pluck the problem from his mind, “It _is_   nothing.  I dream of nothingness.  Black all around me.  I cannot move, or breathe, or scream.  It is waiting to die only the dying never comes, just in between here and there.  Nothing.”  He shrugs and chuckles bitterly, “Last night was the longest I slept for…” Another shrug. “I do not need much sleep anyway.”

Clint snatched Pietro up in a tight hug that makes the younger man gasp.  Clint tries to pour everything he has into that hug: all his affection, how fucking sorry he is, his desire to take all of Pietro’s suffering away.  If Clint could absorb all the darkness plaguing Pietro, he would, right then and there he would.

Clint pulls back, taking Pietro’s face in his hands, “I live with superhumans, every goddamned day.  I’ve learned in that unholy time that superhumans are more human than they are super, even Cap.  You need your sleep, kid.”

“You need to stop calling me that.”  Pietro says a little out of left field, Clint can feel the heat of his breath on his lips.

“Kid?  Why?”

“Because you like me.”  Every time he says the words they sound different.  

There’s heat in his eyes and Clint still hasn’t let go of him.  It feels natural for Clint to lean forward and press his mouth against Pietro’s lush lips.  Pietro grabs his wrists roughly and steps even closer into Clint’s space, he opens his mouth and lets Clint in, God, Clint watched movies and read books about kisses like fireworks that made you dizzy and fall in love.  He hadn’t thought that existed in real life, he’d been wrong.  Pietro was fire and aggressive and so so much better than Clint had imagined.  They release for air and pant against each other, one of Clint’s hands made its way down Pietro’s side to clutch possessively at his hip, his skin felt like satin over steel.

“Stay?”  Pietro asks and he’s uncertain.  How the hell could he be uncertain after that?

“As long as you want me.”

“I want you.”

And there went the _swoosh_ feeling that nearly had him on his knees again.  Spluttering a bit Clint tries to clarify, “We can’t, I mean I want to do this right, treat you right and e-everything.”

“Not what I was asking for. Just sleep.”  Pietro says nodding.

“Oh, okay, good, that’s.  Fuck, if you had been asking I don’t think I could say no to you.” The vast pit of anxiety in Clint dried up and transformed to love, lust, and a sense of doom that could only come with Pietro Maximoff knowing all your weaknesses.

Pietro smirks, “I will keep that in mind.” 

Pietro’s bed smelled like him.  Some strange scent of Sokovian woods, pine trees, the almost metallic hint of snow, and a shampoo Clint could never identify because it was always changing like Pietro was trying a new kind every week.  They fit together perfectly, something inside Clint clicked in place too.  Everything is nearly perfect except Pietro isn’t going back to sleep.  His got Clint’s hand in his own, mapping the lines with a fingertip making tingles shoot through Clint’s arm and down his spine every time he drags down a new path.

“I could…” Clint coughs and accepts his face is probably red as a cherry, “Sing to you, if you want.”

The motion stops, “You want to… _sing_ to me…?”

“Um, yeah? Wanda…you know what never mind it’s stupid.”

“No, no, uh, you can do that… if you want.”  They’re flushing furiously when Pietro threads his fingers in Clint’s.

“Tili tili bom, Zakroy glaza skoreye—” Clint starts but is interrupted by Pietro’s laugh.

“Oh my _God_ ,”  the younger chokes out between laughing, “not _that_ one!  How do you even know that!?”

“What?  Wanda sang it to you every night!”  Clint defends.

Pietro rolls to his side, face lit-up in amusement, “Because she wanted me to _wake up_!  Nothing kept me awake like that damned song when we were kids.  Puts _her_ out like nothing else but me?” Another bout of laughter rolls out of him.  “Also your accent is atrocious.”

“Shuddap.”  Clint digs his elbow in Pietro’s side, “Maybe I should get Thor in here to sing to you.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t want that.”  Pietro teases.

And no, Clint wouldn’t want that at all.  “Why not?”

In Tili Tili Bom’s tune Pietro sings, “Because you like me.”

 

Later that morning, really it was nearing closer to noon than morning, Wanda can’t get a certain lullaby out of her head.  She hums it while she makes coffee, too strong for her American companions save one, and pours two cups and takes them out to the floor’s balcony.  Natasha makes a grateful noise when Wanda offers her the mug.  Everyone had a late night for different reasons.

“How are our boys?”  Natasha asks.

Wanda smiles, relief evident there, “Sleeping.  Soundly, for once.  They are good for each other.”

Natasha _hmms_ and returns the sly smile, “Tony owes us shopping sprees at Tiffany’s and dinner at the Montague for winning the bet.  You want to go with me?”

“Like—”

“Like a date, yes.”

In a small voice and a pretty blush Wanda replies, “Okay.” Natasha’s grin grows then places a chaste kiss to Wanda’s cheek.

“What do you think their first date will be?”  Wanda muses.

“Knowing Clint?  Pizza and day-old coffee over a marathon of Dog Cops, probably.”

“Pietro would _love_ that!”  Wanda wasn’t kidding.

“Of course he would.”  Natasha scoffs not unkindly, “C’mon it’s getting hot out here and I have a lot of work ahead of me.”

“Work?”

“Yep.”  Natasha pops the “p”, “Now I have _two_ dates to plan.”

Wanda lets that sink-in then break out in an infectious grin, “Can I help with the second one?”

“Of course.”

Clint doesn’t wonder how tickets to the public space observatory end up slipped under his door a few days later.  The red scrawl that says “Don’t Fuck This Up” and a little terribly-drawn spider with witch hat on the envelope is all he needs to know.

 

 

End.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Listen to Tili Tili Bom and never sleep again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDMmj5WgB8c  
> Thanks for reading and comment pls:)


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